IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpmi/0407008.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Standards Coalitions Formation and Market Structure in Network Industries

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Economides

    (Stern School of Business, New York University)

  • Andrzej Skrzypacz

    (GSB, Stanford University)

Abstract

We discuss the formation of technical standards platforms in industries with network externalities where firms are free to choose their degree of technical compatibility with competitors. In our model, firms choose affiliation to a technical standards coalition in the first stage of a game, and play an oligopoly game in the second stage. In adding itself to a technical standards coalition, a firm benefits from the network effects of the whole coalition, but also faces increased competition in the output market from other firms in the coalition. Also, the increase of the size of the coalition changes the competitive position of members of that coalition relative to other firms. We find that the extent and size of coalitions at equilibrium depends crucially on the degree of the intensity of network effects. When network effects are very strong, full compatibility prevails. When externalities are slightly weaker, two standards coalitions are formed, a singleton, and one with all remaining firms. On the other extreme, for very weak network effects, the equilibrium is total incompatibility, and for slightly more intense network effects, coalitions are of small size. We characterize a number of other equilibria for intermediate strengths of network externalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Economides & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2004. "Standards Coalitions Formation and Market Structure in Network Industries," Microeconomics 0407008, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpmi:0407008
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/mic/papers/0407/0407008.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1982. "Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 97-109, January.
    2. Ray, Debraj & Vohra, Rajiv, 1997. "Equilibrium Binding Agreements," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 30-78, March.
    3. Kalyan Chatterjee & Bhaskar Dutia & Debraj Ray & Kunal Sengupta, 2013. "A Noncooperative Theory of Coalitional Bargaining," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Bargaining in the Shadow of the Market Selected Papers on Bilateral and Multilateral Bargaining, chapter 5, pages 97-111, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Ray, Debraj & Vohra, Rajiv, 1999. "A Theory of Endogenous Coalition Structures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 286-336, January.
    5. Francis Bloch, 1995. "Endogenous Structures of Association in Oligopolies," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(3), pages 537-556, Autumn.
    6. Bloch, Francis, 1996. "Sequential Formation of Coalitions in Games with Externalities and Fixed Payoff Division," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 90-123, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Attila Ambrus & Rossella Argenziano, 2004. "Network Markets and Consumers Coordination," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1481, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    2. Christ, Julian P. & Slowak, André P., 2009. "Why blu-ray vs. HD-DVD ist not VHS vs. Betamax: The co-evolution of standard-setting consortia," FZID Discussion Papers 05-2009, University of Hohenheim, Center for Research on Innovation and Services (FZID).
    3. Yu. Yatsenko & N. Hritonenko, 2007. "Network economics and optimal replacement of age-structured IT capital," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 65(3), pages 483-497, June.
    4. repec:hrv:faseco:4589709 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Attila Ambrus & Rosella Argenziano, 2004. "Network Markets and Consumer Coordination," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 0423, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    6. Attila Ambrus & Rossella Argenziano, 2009. "Asymmetric Networks in Two-Sided Markets," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 17-52, February.
    7. Dobrescu, Emilian, 2011. "Sectoral Structure and Economic Growth," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(3), pages 5-36, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. László Á. Kóczy, 2018. "Partition Function Form Games," Theory and Decision Library C, Springer, number 978-3-319-69841-0, December.
    2. Ray, Debraj & Vohra, Rajiv, 2015. "Coalition Formation," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    3. Yildirim, Huseyin, 2007. "Proposal power and majority rule in multilateral bargaining with costly recognition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 167-196, September.
    4. Roy Chowdhury, Prabal & Sengupta, Kunal, 2012. "Transparency, complementarity and holdout," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 598-612.
    5. Gabszewicz, J.J. & Marini, M. & Tarola, O., 2015. "Alliance Formation in a Vertically Differentiated Market," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2015030, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    6. Maria Montero, 2023. "Coalition Formation in Games with Externalities," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 525-548, June.
    7. Konishi, Hideo & Ray, Debraj, 2003. "Coalition formation as a dynamic process," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 1-41, May.
    8. Armando Gomes, "undated". "A Theory of Negotiations and Formation of Coalitions," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 21-99, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    9. Roy Chowdhury, Prabal & Sengupta, Kunal, 2008. "Multi-person Bargaining With Complementarity: Is There Holdout?," MPRA Paper 11517, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Armo Gomes, "undated". "A Theory of Negotiation and Formation of Coalition," Penn CARESS Working Papers f0f956747161c96ffb6e79d05, Penn Economics Department.
    11. A. Mauleon & V. Vannetelbosch, 2000. "Coalitional Negotiation with Monitoring," THEMA Working Papers 2000-35, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    12. Thoron, Sylvie & Sol, Emmanuel & Willinger, Marc, 2009. "Do binding agreements solve the social dilemma?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1271-1282, December.
    13. Britz, Volker & Herings, P. Jean-Jacques & Predtetchinski, Arkadi, 2014. "On the convergence to the Nash bargaining solution for action-dependent bargaining protocols," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 178-183.
    14. Kóczy, LászlóÁ., 2015. "Stationary consistent equilibrium coalition structures constitute the recursive core," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 104-110.
    15. Chander, Parkash & Wooders, Myrna, 2020. "Subgame-perfect cooperation in an extensive game," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    16. Messan Agbaglah, 2017. "Overlapping coalitions, bargaining and networks," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 82(3), pages 435-459, March.
    17. Bloch, Francis & Gomes, Armando, 2006. "Contracting with externalities and outside options," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 172-201, March.
    18. Paz Espinosa, Maria & Macho-Stadler, Ines, 2003. "Endogenous formation of competing partnerships with moral hazard," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 183-194, July.
    19. Sergio Currarini & Marco A. Marini, 2015. "Coalitional Approaches to Collusive Agreements in Oligopoly Games," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 83(3), pages 253-287, June.
    20. Marini, Marco A. & Currarini, Sergio, 2003. "A sequential approach to the characteristic function and the core in games with externalities," MPRA Paper 1689, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2003.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    standards; coalition formation; network effects;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpmi:0407008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: EconWPA The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask EconWPA to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.